About Swedish

SEATTLE – Swedish/Cherry Hill Chief Operating Officer Rayburn Lewis, M.D., has been named the new chief executive of Swedish/Issaquah. He will begin work in his new role on Feb. 10 and replaces retiring Swedish/Issaquah Chief Executive Chuck Salmon.

“I am honored to be charged with the responsibility of leading one of the newest and highest quality hospitals in the entire region,” Dr. Lewis said. “Our focus will continue to be on building the strongest, healthiest communities across Issaquah and East King County.”

Dr. Lewis, a board-certified internal medicine physician who has been a member of Swedish’s medical staff since 1984, brings to his new executive role a wealth of leadership experience from across the Swedish system.

SEATTLE – Swedish thoracic surgeon Eric Vallieres, M.D., was featured Sunday in a Super Bowl commercial highlighting Microsoft Corp.’s history of innovation. The commercial, filmed in part at Swedish/First Hill in Seattle, shows Dr. Vallieres demonstrating the GestSure system, which allows surgeons to manipulate medical images during procedures using Microsoft’s Kinect platform.

“Just by using your hands in front of the Kinect, you can actually control your x-ray without scrubbing out. I can correlate what’s happening on the patient with what’s happening on the images, so there is better flow of surgery and that translates into better care for my patient,” Dr. Vallieres said in an online video that further details the GestSure system.

SEATTLE – Today Pacific Medical Centers (PacMed) announced its intention to enter a secular affiliation with Providence Health & Services. This affiliation brings together PacMed’s successful model of delivering high quality coordinated care at an affordable cost and Providence’s history of delivering compassionate, quality care across the Northwest. The goal of the affiliation is to reduce the cost of health care for patients, employers and government insurers, while improving health outcomes for patients.

“PacMed wants to change the way health care is organized, delivered and paid for in order to help our communities live healthier lives,” said Harvey Smith, president & CEO of PacMed, which operates nine, multi-specialty clinic locations in the greater Puget Sound area. “We have a long history of working closely with our patients to manage their health care responsibly, while yielding high patient satisfaction, excellent health outcomes and lower costs. On its own, PacMed cannot drive broad changes in the way that health care is delivered. We need to collaborate with an organization that has sufficient resources and a similar community-minded mission and vision to succeed. Not just any partner, but the right partner.”

“After more than a year of careful discussions with many potential affiliates, PacMed has chosen a secular affiliation with Providence Health & Services,” Smith said. “Providence shares our desire to change the delivery care model to ensure high-quality, more affordable care in our communities. We are passionate about all of the positive benefits working together will provide for our communities.”

Ballard, Issaquah Hospitals set Records with More Than 1,000 Deliveries

SEATTLE –Swedish Health Services delivered 9,014 babies across four hospitals in 2013, a record for the hospital system and an increase of 3 percent over 2012. Last year also saw a record number of births at both Swedish Ballard and Swedish Issaquah, which each surpassed 1,000 deliveries for the first time. In total, three of Swedish’s four hospitals offering childbirth services saw growth in 2013.

“We take great pride in providing Western Washington families with the very best convenience and care for their pregnancies and newborns,” said Jane Uhlir, M.D., executive director of the Women & Infants program at Swedish. “We share in the joy these families experienced last year and look forward to a lifetime of health and wellbeing for these children.”

123 New Accountable Care Organizations Join Program to Improve Care for Medicare beneficiaries

SEATTLE – The Providence and Swedish ACO of Washington has been selected as one of 123 new Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) in Medicare, providing approximately 1.5 million more Medicare beneficiaries with access to high-quality, coordinated care across the United States, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced Dec. 23.

Doctors, hospitals and health care providers establish ACOs in order to work together to provide higher-quality coordinated care to their patients, while helping to slow health care cost growth. Since passage of the Affordable Care Act, more than 360 (ACOs) have been established, serving over 5.3 million Americans with Medicare. Beneficiaries seeing health care providers in ACOs always have the freedom to choose doctors inside or outside of the ACO. ACOs share with Medicare any savings generated from lowering the growth in health care costs when they meet standards for high quality care.

“Accountable Care Organizations are delivering higher quality care to Medicare beneficiaries and are using Medicare dollars more efficiently,” Secretary Sebelius said. “This is a great example of the Affordable Care Act rewarding hospitals and doctors that work together to help our beneficiaries get the best possible care.”

Congratulations to Niamh O'Connell and Wyatt Powell, who are the proud parents of Seattle’s first baby born in 2014. Killian Powell was born at 12:51 a.m. on Jan. 1 at Swedish First Hill. KING 5 television sat down with the family and gave viewers a sense of what little Killian and his parents can expect over the coming years.